


Making Sense

by FoxGlade



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, International Fanworks Day 2018, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 15:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13390908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: Everyone knows you physically can't lie to your soulmate. If you try, the truth will come out anyway, with or without your permission.Todd and Dirk are soulmates. Things go downhill very, very fast.





	Making Sense

**Author's Note:**

> "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense" - Mark Twain.
> 
> good evening folks its julian here with another round of "i started writing this au and dramatically underestimated how much the concept would change the events taking place in canon". this fic was originally meant to be much longer, but it's been languishing in ny wip folder for long enough tbh. 
> 
> dirk is written as autistic in this fic. thanks to shena and nellie for being so reliably enthusiastic about the concept of soulmates, this one's for u guys.

“You didn’t see anything weird this morning, did you, Mr. Brotzman?” Estevez asks.

“Yes,” Todd answers automatically. Then, hurriedly, “No.” Because what’s he doing to do, tell them, yeah, he saw a clone of himself in the hallway of the 18th floor, talking to someone and looking so happy that for a few seconds he didn’t even recognise himself? That’ll go well.

Zimmerfield looks unimpressed. “Maybe,” Todd amends. “I don’t know.”

“Are you aware you just gave every possible response to that question?” Estevez asks, also looking unimpressed. That’s just generally how people look at Todd, though, so he just shrugs. Estevez scrutinises him for a few seconds, then leans casually against the kitchen bench and says, “You got a soulmate, Mr. Brotzman?”

That’s unexpected. “No,” he says, and then, “I mean, I guess everyone does, but I don’t know who they are. They aren’t with me or anything.”

Estevez hums and nods. “You know, I’ve found that sometimes, when people don’t have anyone they can’t lie to, they find it a little too easy to lie. You get me?” He stares at Todd. Todd fights the urge to swallow, mouth suddenly very dry. He nods instead. “If I were you, I wouldn’t leave town.”

 

* * *

 

After that close call, he really does plan on keeping his head down. Clearly that plan dissolved shortly after coming into contact with Dirk Gently. The man is basically an oversized mosquito in a bright yellow jacket, annoying and distracting and continuously popping up even after he thought he’d gotten rid of him. But he does give him a ride to Amanda’s, and doesn’t turn him over to Dorian, so that’s. Something.

He’s basically just trying not to think about anything too hard, so when they pull into a gas station, he automatically gets out and starts filling the tank, only snapping out of it when he realises Dirk’s jumped up to sit on the roof of the car, and is now looking at him with a weird, pleased expression.

“What,” he says, keeping an eye on the price as it ticks up. He really hopes Dirk has money on him.

“I didn’t even ask you to do that,” Dirk says, still with that small smile. “You’re already acting like an assistant.”

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Todd mutters. Dirk flails his hands.

“Whatever you like. You’re much more important to this case than you realise,” he says, and then stops, tilting his head and looking away.

Todd blinks at him for a second and then says, “I’m not – what case? I just want to get to my sister’s house.”

“And you will!” Dirk says brightly. “It’s all part of the interconnectedness.”

“So now she’s part of it too?” Todd asks. He puts the gas pump back in the slot and crosses his arms. “Are you like, investigating me? Is that what this is?”

“Do you have something worth investigating about you?” Dirk counters. He slides off the car and stands in front of him, slightly too close for comfort. “The case isn’t about you, Todd, but you _are_ a part of it, I know.”

“How do you know?” Todd challenges. “Who told you to break into my apartment?”

“I did,” Dirk says promptly, and then gasps, quickly covering his mouth with his hands, eyes wide. Todd stares. After a few seconds, Dirk tentatively lowers his hands and says, “I – a future version of myself told me to find you!” The last words are muffled by him quickly slapping his hands back over his mouth, but Todd hears them loud and clear anyway.

“What are you talking about?” he says, shuffling back slightly. On the scale he’s constructed in their very short acquaintance, this isn’t the absolute weirdest thing Dirk has said, but it’s very close to it.

“Todd,” Dirk squeaks, still muffled by his hands, “tell me a lie. Right now. Lie to me right now.”

For a wild second, Todd has to stop himself saying, _which lie should I tell you? I’ve got a lot to choose from._ But he has the worst feeling that he knows exactly what’s going on, so instead he chooses the old standby – “The sky is green.”

He thinks the words, and at the same time, his mouth says, “The sky is blue.”

Oh, shit.

“My name is Dorian,” he tries, only for his mouth to betray him again, saying “My name is Todd.” Dirk’s eyes are even wider now. “I have a sister. She has pararibulitus. I never had pararibulitus. _Shit!_ ”

“I have no idea what that means,” Dirk says enthusiastically, seemingly unaware of the horrific spiral of realisation Todd is currently experiencing, “but I’m pretty sure it’s the truth. Oh, this is so exciting!” Before Todd can react, Dirk is pulling him into a hug which more resembles the way a small child picks up a cat. “I knew we were going to be best friends, I didn’t know we were _soulmates!”_

“Wait, no,” Todd says into the bright yellow leather of Dirk’s jacket, still reeling from what exactly just left his mouth. “This can’t – there has to be a mistake. Did you say _future version_ —?”

A loud engine growls in the near distance, and Dirk freezes, his entire body tensing around Todd’s before he pulls away. “We should go,” he says, voice suddenly shaky. “We should go.” And he yanks open the driver’s seat door, folding himself in and starting the engine before Todd can process his absence.

“Wait,” he says again, but the engine growls again, and on second thoughts, it does sound pretty intimidating. “Right. Okay.” And he hurries to the passenger side.

He barely closes the door before Dirk screeches the car out of the gas station, not so much checking his mirrors as staring into them with poorly concealed horror. “Is there someone coming after us?” Todd asks, clinging to the door as Dirk rockets them down the road.

“The Rowdy 3,” Dirk says, voice still shaky. “It’s going to be very bad.” His frown deepens. “Oh, I meant to say, ‘it’s nothing to worry about’. Quite inconvenient.”

“You’re telling me,” Todd says, sinking back into his seat and trying to sort out the scrambled memories of the last few minutes. This suspiciously weird stranger is his soulmate. He knows that Todd never had pararibulitus. He doesn’t seem to have any understanding of what that means. Someone is coming after them.

That probably takes priority. “Wait, we can’t go to Amanda’s now,” Todd says, turning to face Dirk, who’s still white-knuckling the steering wheel. “I can’t get her involved, she could get hurt!”

“They won’t hurt her,” Dirk says. “Probably. She isn’t a police officer or some other member of the authoritarian ruling state of this country, right?”

“I don’t think so?” Todd says. “She likes punk music.” Dirk nods decisively.

“They won’t hurt her,” he says, slightly more confidently. “Besides, you really want to see her, and I promised I would drive you, so that’s what we’re doing. There’s a connection here, I’m sure. Besides, this car is _much_ faster than their van,” he adds.

“Their – this is crazy. Oh my God, everything about this is crazy,” Todd moans, putting his face in his hands for a second before looking up again. “Did you say _future version of yourself?”_

Dirk looks at him, squirms uncomfortably, then takes one hand off the wheel to bite it. “Yes,” he mumbles.

“You know that makes no sense, right?” Dirk nods miserably, still biting his hand. “Hey, stop, don’t hurt yourself,” Todd says, taking Dirk’s wrist and tugging his hand away from his mouth. “What does that mean?”

“I really don’t understand it myself, I promise,” Dirk says, sounding upset enough that Todd feels kind of bad for asking. “And as we’ve already discovered, I can’t actually lie if you ask me about something, so maybe you could just… not ask..?”

He’s looking at Todd with a pathetic expression. Now he feels even worse. “Fine,” he says after a few moments. “But I’m going to want an explanation after I see Amanda.” He’s still holding Dirk’s wrist. He drops it and crosses his arms.

The rest of the drive is spent sitting in the weird energy of their conversation, Todd still running over exactly what had just happened, Dirk checking the mirrors every thirty seconds and occasionally twisting all the way around in his seat to stare out the back window. A few times Todd looks at him and opens his mouth to say something, but changes his mind at the last second – if he doesn’t ask Dirk anything, then Dirk won’t ask him anything, and that’s probably for the best.

It’s a relief to finally look up and see familiar houses around him. “It’s the next street on the—” he starts, but Dirk is already steering to the left. “How did you know that?” he asks. Dirk just hums and pointedly doesn’t look at him. “Seriously, I’m not gonna just not ask you anything ever. How do you know where my sister lives?”

“I don’t!” Dirk insists, and immediately contradicts himself by pulling over to the kerb directly opposite Amanda’s house. “I just… feel like this is where I’m meant to be.”

“Right,” Todd says warily. “Hey, how do I know if you’re not lying? Maybe you have… I don’t know, weird psychic powers that can break the soulmate… thing.”

“I am not psychic!” Dirk says, surprisingly vehemently. Todd blinks in surprise, but as soon as the sudden frustration appears, it’s gone. “But honestly, Todd, do you think I’d lie about meeting my future self?” Dirk says, not looking at him, fiddling with the stitching on the steering wheel instead.

“Well, you never actually explained anything about that, so, yeah,” Todd replies. “Maybe you’re just trying to – to keep me here for some weird creepy reason.”

Dirk turns to him finally, rolling his eyes. “Fine. Why don’t you just ask me something embarrassing, and we can get on with this, alright?”

“Fine,” Todd says. He leans back in his seat, thinking back to college Never Have I Ever games, dredging up a memory of something one of his bandmates had asked. “Have you ever had sex with a guy?”

Dirk doesn’t even blink. “Twice. That’s hardly embarrassing.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Todd admits. He’d never really liked that particular bandmate. “Okay, uh…” His gaze wanders over the rows of houses, thoughts drifting until his eyes land on Amanda’s front door. “What was the worst day of your life?” he asks without thinking.

Dirk’s eyes widen, and the words, “When my mum died,” slip out of his mouth.

Immediately Todd shoots up in his seat, hands outstretched uselessly toward Dirk. “Shit, sorry, I don’t know why I said that,” he says. Dirk is staring at him with wide, shiny eyes and tight lips, and for some reason it feels like an arrow in Todd’s heart. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I just – the worst day of my life was when I found out Amanda was sick. I guess I was thinking about it.”

Dirk is still looking at him with something like betrayal in his face, so Todd just sighs and opens the car door. Another interaction ruined. “I’m really sorry,” he says again, and grabs his guitar to head inside.

He’d never even wanted to meet his soulmate, is the thing. He’s a liar and an asshole, and a soulmate would at best resent him, and at worst tear down every single lie he’d carefully built over the years. Dirk is weird and unpredictable and, Todd can admit, seems almost… nice. Everything about him is exactly what Todd was afraid he’d get. So it’s probably best to drive him away now.

He knocks and Amanda’s door and hitches his guitar on his shoulder.

“You should ring the bell,” Dirk advises, and Todd starts violently. There he is, standing next to him with that pleased look, as if he’d been there the whole time.

“Jesus, you scared me,” Todd says, clutching his guitar. “What are you, a ninja?”

“Of course not,” Dirk says, “although I do like to tell people the CIA trained me to be one. That’s a lie though – that’s not what they trained me for.” He gives a strained laugh. Todd eyes him warily.

“Are you… okay?” he asks.

“I’m still a little upset,” Dirk says, cheerful expression utterly at odds with his words. “But I really do want to meet your sister. Aha!” The door opens and Amanda looks out, immediately latching onto Todd.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she says, and then, “Who’s this?”

Oh boy. “This is, uh… this is Dirk Gently,” he says awkwardly. Dirk beams at her and sticks his hand out toward her.

“Hello Amanda,” he says. Amanda looks just as weirded out as Todd’s been feeling for the past two days, so that’s a plus.

“Hi, Dirk,” she says slowly. She shoots him a look and continues, “Are you friends?”

“No,” Todd says, at the same time Dirk gives an enthusiastic “Yes.” The glance at each other. “No, we’re not friends,” Todd says, loudly. Dirk frowns.

“I’m going to ignore that,” he says. “We’re very good friends.” He turns to beam at Amanda again. If Todd didn’t still feel kind of bad about the thing in the car, he’d punch him in the shoulder for it. As it is, Dirk skips past Amanda inside, leaving Todd to shrug dismally at Amanda’s confused expression.

“I only met him yesterday,” he says, as if that’s an explanation for anything. Amanda doesn’t bother responding – just backs up in the hallway to let him in properly.

Dirk is already on the couch watching a news program, seemingly riveted, hands clasped on knees. He doesn’t look up when Todd pushes Amanda past him and into the kitchen.

“Seriously, dude, what’s the deal?” she asks, leaning on the countertop. Todd slumps against the fridge and scrubs a hand through his hair.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore,” he says. “Can I just, I don’t know, do the dishes?”

Amanda points at the stack of dirty plates beside the sink. “Okay, but you have to know that straight up offering to clean my house is like, the most suspicious thing ever, right?” she says.

“I do it all the time,” Todd says, vaguely annoyed. “It’s the least I can do.” He rummages for dish soap and ignores Amanda’s snort.

“Yeah, but like, usually you at least pretend like you don’t want to. This is kind of creepy.” He straightens up to see her peering around the doorway into the living room. “Speaking of creepy. You know you just bought some random stranger into my house.”

“Sorry. I thought he was gonna stay in the car.”

“That is so not an answer.”

Todd shrugs. “He offered me a ride here. He’s not – well, he is pretty weird. But he’s alright.” He hesitates. He doesn’t actually like lying to his sister, and tries not to whenever he can, so it’s smarter to rip the bandaid off this one quickly. “He’s my soulmate, I guess.”

Silence, except for the muted sounds of the news and the squeaking sound of sponge against dirty plate. “Holy _shit_ , Todd!” Amanda whisper-yells, latching onto him sideways for another hug. Todd smiles despite himself. “You found him, holy shit! That’s so cool! Why didn’t you say in your message?”

“Only found out on the way here.” He scrubs at a sauce stain on a bowl and adds, “We tested it. It’s weird. Like, I’d think one thing and then say something completely different. Crazy.”

“Crazy,” Amanda agrees. “At least he’s kinda cute. And he’s like, nice and stuff, right? God, I can’t imagine getting stuck with someone who’s a complete jag.”

“He’s…” Todd flounders, trying to come up with any succinct summary of Dirk’s wildly varied personality traits, uncomfortably aware that he’d only met the man less than 24 hours ago, even more uncomfortably aware that he agrees on Dirk being kind of cute. “I don’t know. Yeah. He’s nice.”

Amanda smiles at him, looking genuinely happy for the first time in months. Todd’s stomach turns. “I’m really happy for you,” she says, backing up to the counter and hopping up to sit on it. “I’m glad one of us could find their soulmate.”

“Hey,” Todd says. He shuts off the tap and turns to face her properly. “You’ll find them. Don’t stress about it.”

Amanda snorts. “I barely go outside, Todd. I don’t even have any friends, let alone potential soulmates.” She kicks at the cabinets underneath her. “I’d just be a burden on whoever it is anyway.”

Todd stands there for a second, soapy dish sponge in hand, thinking of some way to properly refute that. Instead, unexpectedly, Dirk says, “What exactly is pararibulitus?”

He’s twisted around on the couch to look at them both. Amanda looks at Todd. “You told him about it?”

“I mentioned it,” Todd stammers, suddenly panicked and overcome with the surety that Dirk absolutely doesn’t understand the gravity of Todd accidentally telling him that he never had the disease. He needs to shift the topic before Dirk says anything.

But, while he’s going into his second spiral of the day, Dirk’s already talking, saying, “He just said that you had it, and he doesn’t. Is it bad?”

“It’s a nerve disease,” Amanda says, oblivious to Todd’s knees threatening to give out at the sudden rush of relief. Thank God Dirk chose to phrase it that way. Shakily he picks up another dish and starts scrubbing, trying to tune out Amanda’s explanation. “It makes it hard not to be scared all the time,” he hears her say bitterly.

“Oh. Is that why you’re so worried about everything, Todd?” Dirk asks. Todd looks up from the sink, stomach still churning. “Do you think you might get it one day?”

Oh, shit.

“He already had it,” Amanda says, the thunk of her feet hitting the cabinet loud in Todd’s ears. “He got better. So maybe I can one day, too.” She gives Todd a weak smile.

“Oh,” Dirk says. Todd can’t look at him, but he can hear the frown in his voice. “I thought you said you never had pararibulitus? Yes, you said, ‘I never had pararibulitus’, I remember.”

Amanda’s not smiling anymore. Distantly, Todd is aware of her eyes on him, and Dirk’s curious expression, and the splash of water soaking into his shirt and the silence of the room only broken by the newsreader on the television. All of it is very distant.

“What is he talking about?” Amanda says. Her voice is trembling, just slightly. “Todd, what does he mean?”

 Maybe he’s the psychic one, Todd thinks. He always knew his soulmate would be the one to ruin everything. He just never expected it to happen so _fast_.

“I never had pararibulitus,” he breathes.

Everything goes very bad very quickly, after that.

 

* * *

 

Amanda doesn’t push him out the door, but only because he steps outside before she can.

“I’m really glad I met you, Dirk,” she says, smiling painfully. Dirk hovers in the doorway, clearly upset and uncertain. “You seem like a really cool guy. Sorry you got stuck with such a piece of shit for a soulmate.” She doesn’t so much as glance Todd’s way before slamming the door.

Everything is still kind of distant, even the pain in his chest as his brain repeats Amanda telling him that she never wants to see him again. He stumbles back to the car and opens the door in a daze, fumbling at his seatbelt. He barely registers the driver’s side door opening and closing as Dirk folds himself into the car as well.

They sit in silence for a few seconds. “You have a very interesting family,” Dirk says eventually. Todd lets his head fall back against the seat. “Look, I really am sorry, but honestly, how was I supposed to know—”

“You couldn’t just keep your mouth shut,” Todd says, eyes closed. “God, you can’t help yourself, can you?”

“I was only saying what you told me,” Dirk says. Todd cracks open an eye to see him looking annoyed, which for whatever reason makes anger flare up in his chest.

“Then don’t,” Todd says. “Just, don’t say anything. Silence. God, I can’t believe this.”

Dirk fidgets. He taps the steering wheel, then starts the car and pulls away from the kerb.  Todd stares out the window, savouring the quiet while it lasts.

And, sure enough, “I just didn’t realise you were like that. Lying and such.”

Todd slams his hand on the dash and turns to him. “Seriously, do you want me to kill you? Just shut up! I thought soulmates were supposed to make your life better, not fuck you over completely!”

“Well, maybe this is making your life better,” Dirk says, smiling maddeningly. “Maybe being honest with your sister is the next step in the case! After all, everything is conn—”

“Shut up about the case! You don’t get it, do you?” Todd yells. “You’ve ruined my life!”

“I think you’re overreacting,” Dirk says, but at least he’s not smiling anymore. “You’ll see. This will make things better.”

“Oh, so, so you love telling the truth so much? Then tell me what you meant when you talked about your future self,” Todd demands.

Instantly Dirk starts to squirm again. “I… don’t want to,” he says, evasive. Todd stares him down.

“Well, tough shit, Dirk, because you know I’m not lying when I say I really don’t like you right now, and I’m really not in the mood for more lies right now.”

“I’m not lying to you! I wouldn’t!” Dirk insists.

“You mean you can’t,” Todd retorts. “You mean that if you could, you would.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you even if I could, because you’re my friend,” Dirk says. He sounds so stubbornly certain about it that Todd stops for a moment, and then seethes.

“We’re not friends! You’re just some crazy guy who’s, who’s inserted himself into my life!” Dirk isn’t looking at him, but Todd can see his lips turned down, the shininess of his eyes, and he almost feels bad about the words tumbling out of his mouth, but they just keep coming. “I’m not your Watson, asshole, I’m not here to solve some case I’m not a part of. I don’t want to be a part of this case! I don’t want to be your soulmate!”

The silence of the car is oppressive. Todd stares out his window, not wanting to see whatever look is on Dirk’s face now. He ignores the quiet sniffling.

This is the second time he’s made Dirk cry in this car, he realises. He’s only known the man for a day and he’s already made him cry twice. Even for him, this is a new low.

But it’s been minutes now, and the silence is dragging on, and if he wanted to apologise he should have done it right away, and every second takes him further away from an acceptable time to fix his mistakes.

Just like the ride here, the hour it takes to get back to the Ridgley is filled with a weird energy, although this time it’s less fuelled by panic and wonder at the reality of meeting his soulmate, and more fuelled by panic and self-loathing at the reality of screwing things up so completely. It’s consuming enough that he doesn’t even notice they’re back until Dirk pulls the car to a stop.

“Thanks,” he says, voice sounding strange in the air of the car. Dirk just nods. He’s looking at his hands, still clutching the wheel. Todd looks at his dejected face and steels himself, a weird feeling coming over him. It’s unfamiliar, but he thinks it might be bravery. “What I said earlier,” he begins, but Dirk speaks over him.

“It was terrible,” he says in a monotone voice. And then, “Oh, I meant to say, ‘It’s fine’. This really is inconvenient.”

“Yeah,” Todd says, feeling that same arrow-in-the-heart feeling he had when Dirk accidentally blurted out his worst day ever. “Listen. I didn’t – it was the truth then, when I was angry. You believe a lot of bad stuff when you don’t feel good. I used to – I have—” Even with the urge to be truthful, he can’t make the word come out of his mouth. “It doesn’t matter. I was upset, and I said some really shitty stuff, and I’m sorry.”

Dirk fidgets his hands on the wheel. “So you’re… not upset now?” he asks, tentative. Todd tries to smile.

“No,” he tries to say, but his mouth says “Yes,” without his permission. He winces. “Yeah,” he repeats, “but I still shouldn’t have said that stuff. I’m just – it’s been a weird few days.”

For the first time, Dirk stops eyeing him sideways like a spooked horse and instead turns to face him, taking his hands off the wheel to lean on the console between them and looking him in the eye with a depth of sincerity that, honestly, kind of freaks Todd out.

“I really do believe this will make things better,” he says. “The universe is going to reward you for investigating this case with me, I guarantee it. Just wait. All of this will make sense eventually.”

“Yeah?” Todd asks. Dirk nods. “Okay. Okay.” Dirk just keeps looking at him. “Do you want to… come inside?” he asks, a tentative peace offering, only half made because he’s pretty sure Dirk will follow him anyway.

That seems to snap Dirk out of it. He tilts his head in surprise, and then smiles as brightly as ever, tapping his fingers on the console as he says, “I really would. You know, your flat’s quite nice? A little messy for my tastes, but I’m sure it suits you very well. We can discuss the case there!”

“Thanks,” Todd says. Then, “Wait, so you’re finally going to tell me what the case actually is?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Dirk says, then turns to the door and fumbles his way out of the car, ungraceful and awkward like a baby heron. “The death of Patrick Spring! The incident at the Perriman Grand! I was hired to investigate it.” He slams the door, and then opens it again, adding, “By the victim,” before slamming it again.

Todd blinks alone in the car for a few seconds before he scrabbles at his own door, guitar still in hand. “Hey, no, wait,” he says, “Patrick Spring? Like, the rich guy? He’s the one who died at the hotel?”

Dirk is leaning over the roof of the car when he straightens up, hands played over the bright blue paint, face intense. “That’s right. And he hired me _well_ above my average rate to investigate this, a full six weeks ago.”

“His own death?” Todd asks. “But that’s – that’s—”

“Insanely interesting?” Dirk suggests. “Completely unlikely? Positively Vonnegut-esque?”

“Everything except that last one,” Todd says. He pauses, a crazy thought flitting in and out of his head in an instant. A memory he’s repressed in the wake of everything else that’s happened recently. A wild few seconds where he’d seen himself standing at the end of the 18th floor hallway at the Perriman Grand. “Wait. He hired you six weeks ago.”

“I just said that, Todd, keep up. I know you’re new to this whole assisting thing, but I really need you to be a bit quicker on the uptake.”

“I don’t even know what the uptake is!” Todd retorts, leaning over the car roof as well. He has to stand on tip toes to do it. “Just listen. Patrick Spring knew he was going to be murdered. You knew where I was because apparently you told yourself about it.” For a second, he considers not adding the last piece of the puzzle, but his traitorous soulmate-having mouth keeps talking and says, “I saw myself at that hotel too. Somehow. And I have absolutely no explanation for it, but maybe you do.”

As he talks, Dirk’s eyes keep getting wider and wider, and when Todd adds his last point, he gasps, bouncing up and down a bit. “I take it back,” he says, voice high pitched with excitement, “you’re an _excellent_ assistant, Todd, absolutely brilliant, oh, it makes so much sense—!”

“No, it doesn’t!” Todd says over his ranting, to no effect. “Seriously, Dirk, this is crazy. I’m being stupid. It can’t actually be—” Dirk is giving him a look that spells trouble. “No way. No, no, this is too weird.” Dirk is still looking at him, smile reigned in to non-blinding levels, practically vibrating with explosive energy. Todd suddenly feels very, very tired. “Time travel?” he says weakly.

“Time travel,” Dirk breathes. Todd lets his head thunk forward onto the roof.

A second later, he hears a vaguely familiar engine rumble loudly a street or two away, somehow conjuring the image of the sort of van that you’d cross the street to avoid. He looks up to see Dirk’s face go pale and crumpled.

“Not now,” he groans. “We need to go, right now.”

“Is that the same van from before?” Todd asks as Dirk flails about, turning in circles and frowning. “The Big Three or whatever?”

“I don’t want this,” Dirk says. Everything about him, from his flapping hands to his shaking voice, reads as intense distress, and as it turns out, that stabbing pain in his heart apparently pops up any time Dirk is upset, not just when Todd’s the one causing it.

Besides, in the adrenaline rush of the moment, the only thing that matters is making sure they get out of here alive. “Come on,” he says, and when Dirk just continues to turn in circles on the sidewalk, he runs around the hood of the car to grab his wrist and drag him towards the Ridgley.

He closes the front door behind them just as a screech and the slam of metal sounds on the street. Beside him, Dirk jumps and curses, but Todd keeps them moving up to the second floor, not stopping until they’re in his apartment.

“You’re sure they’re after you?” Todd asks, looking through the peephole. The hallways is empty, but he can hear sounds of violence downstairs. He looks back just in time to see Dirk attempt to slide under his bed. “You okay?”

“Stupid traitor bed!” Dirk shouts. “I am most certainly not okay, and they most certainly are after me, all because of my stupid—” He stands and flings himself into the corner behind the door. Todd stares for a moment before checking the peephole again.

There’s a man with white hair looking back at him. “Ding dong,” the man says, and then kicks the door open.

After that, it’s just chaos. Todd pushes Dirk into the kitchen so they can be as physically far from the destruction as possible without climbing out the window. He’s got one arm thrown out as a barrier for Dirk, pressed against the door behind him, and one clutched around his guitar, the only thing being spared from the four men currently smashing his life to pieces with baseball bats.

It’s the second most stressful thing that’s happened to him in the past two days, the first being opening a hotel door and finding several dead bodies. At least in this situation, he’s somewhat distracted by Dirk, who’s slid down the door and is now curled up with his hands over his ears, face screwed up and miserable. Torn between helplessly watching the men gleefully throw parts of his apartment around, and checking on Dirk, he finally crouches down and puts a hand on Dirk’s shoulder.

“Dirk? Don’t do this,” he says, trying to be heard over the smashing and inexplicable howling without drawing attention to them. “I think they just want to break stuff. We’re probably fine over here.” The words come out as he intends, so it’s the truth, but as he’s already proven, anything is truthful if you believe it, never mind whether it’s actually true in an objective sense.

And that’s when he realises the apartment has gone very quiet.

He turns to see the four men looming over them, bats still in hand but weirdly still, and before he can even think about it, he’s standing up as well. They still loom over him easily, but he’s trying not to let that get to him. “Back off,” he says, making his voice as harsh as possible.

All four of the men start laughing, way harder than the situation justifies. “Is that actually necessary?” Todd says. They continue to laugh until one of the guys grabs him by the front of the shirt and hauls him out of the way, sending him right into the fridge. When he shakes off the hit, the four have converged over Dirk, who still has his hands over his ears and his eyes closed.

“Dirk!” he yells, struggling to his feet, only to stop when the four men spread their arms and… start glowing?

It’s almost like they’re sucking some sort of blue energy out of Dirk, except that’s crazy, maybe even crazier than possibly time travel. And just like when he saw his possible future self at the Perriman Grand, he stands frozen until the energy disappears and the four men filter out silently, two of them high fiving before they all clamber out the window. It’s not until the last one disappears from sight that he snaps out of it and rushes to Dirk’s side.

“Dirk, are you okay? What was that?” But Dirk is now slumped further down the wall, hugging himself instead of covering his ears. His quick, harsh breathing is the only thing assuring Todd that he isn’t unconscious. “Dirk, they’re gone. Come on, get up.” Dirk doesn’t say anything, but he curls up on himself a little tighter. Todd sits back on his heels.

He’s not exactly a comforting person, but he’s been looking after Amanda for years now, and he knows one or two tricks. “I’ll be back in a second,” he tells Dirk, and then quickly goes to the main room to survey the damage.

It’s bad, exactly as bad as you’d think, given the whole ‘four men with baseball bats’ thing. But he’s trying to deal with one clusterfuck at a time, so he just picks up the first blanket he can find and brings it back to Dirk. “Here,” he says, and throws the blanket over Dirk, covering him as much as he can. His stupidly long legs poke out. “Focus on the blanket. It’s soft, right?” Amanda had gotten it for him, the first and only time she’d been in this apartment. Amanda never wants to see him again. “Just focus on that for a while.”

He leans against the wall next to the blanket-covered lump that is Dirk and blows out a deep breath. The adrenaline is leaving his system, and it’s rapidly being replaced by memories of the last two days. He’s lost his job, because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and managed to stumble into Dirk’s case. His sister wants him dead, because Dirk revealed his secret. His apartment is in ruins around him, because some guys followed Dirk here to destroy it.

But it’s hard to be mad at someone who’s currently trembling underneath a fuzzy blue blanket. And he can recognise that Dirk has mostly been a passive participant in these events, seemingly as caught up and swept along as Todd has been. At the very least, he can’t be blamed for Amanda finding out. Every bit of blame for that situation comes down on Todd’s shoulders.

He rubs at his chest absently, still feeling that pain that he’s now associating with Dirk being anything but cheery and optimistic. Is that a soulmate thing? He’s never really researched the phenomenon, or listened when they talked about it in health class. It’s entirely possible that along with the impossibility of lying, you’re also driven to make sure they’re never upset by way of actual physical pain.

Or that might just be how it is when you have friends. He wouldn’t really know.

It must have only been a few minutes, but he still jumps when Dirk stirs next to him. Dirk tugs the blanket down off his face, mouth still covered, eyes squinty. “Hey,” Todd says. “How’re you feeling?”

“You’re still here,” Dirk murmurs.

It’s quiet, but in the stillness of the ruined apartment, it sounds overwhelmingly loud. “Yeah,” Todd says, letting his knee nudge against Dirk’s. “Still here.”

They sit for another few moments. “Sorry,” Dirk says. He pulls the blanket off altogether, sitting up and bundling it into his lap, although reluctant to discard it altogether; he runs his thumb over the soft fabric in a repetitive motion. “That was…”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Todd says when Dirk trails off. “Sensory overload, right?”

Dirk blinks at him. “Yes,” he says, confusion obvious, “how did you..?”

“Amanda used to get it,” Todd says. He leans back against the door and sighs. “Well. She still gets it. But even before the pararibulitus, she’d get freaked out at shopping malls and parties and stuff – I had to go get her from school a couple times. Now she stays at home all the time, since it can trigger attacks, so it happens less.” He shrugs, suddenly less confident. “The blanket things helps calm her down. Sorry if that was weird.”

“No, it helped,” Dirk says. He leans back as well, so they’re sitting with their shoulders and knees pressed together. “No one’s ever helped me before, when I’m – like that.”

“Like, ever?” Todd asks, frowning. “Not even when you were a kid?”

“I think my mother might have,” Dirk replies softly. He’s staring at the blanket in his lap, still rubbing his thumb over it. “I don’t really remember. But… later, when I was in Blackwing, they thought it might make me better at tests. It didn’t.” All of a sudden he lets his head fall back against the door with a quiet thump. “Please don’t ask me anymore questions.”

“Okay.” Todd still wants to know more about this potential time travel situation, and maybe what Blackwing is and why Dirk was there after his mother died, but mostly at the moment he just wants Dirk to look less miserable.

After another moment of silence, Todd feels Dirk’s head come to rest against his.

And that’s when Dorian bursts through his broken front door, gun in hand. “Where’s my rent, Todd?” he roars, looking around wildly. Todd jumps to his feet, hands outstretched, caught between stepping away from Dirk and keeping the kitchen counter between them. “What did you do to this place?”

“It wasn’t me, I didn’t,” Todd babbles, but Dorian interrupts, yelling,

“Who were those guys? You think they intimidate me?!”

“They were after me,” Dirk says, getting to his feet. Todd has a moment of panicked exasperation – he couldn’t just keep his mouth shut – before Dorian swings the gun towards Dirk and everything just turns to panic. “I’m so sorry, Dorian, I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” Dorian roars, shaking his gun before swinging it back to Todd. “I know what you did. I know you took that money. I warned you, you thieving little—”

The microwave beeps. Dorian’s gun goes off, the sound overwhelmingly loud in the small apartment, and Todd doesn’t have time to do more than flinch before Dorian is falling forward, a neat hole through his head.

The entire exchange couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds, and now they’re back in the same silence that had settled in the apartment before. Apparently this is how he’s going to live now – alternating between terrifying and extremely loud violence, and calm stillness that sits in the wreckage of the preceding violence.

There’s an incredibly strong urge to start laughing hysterically and never stop bubbling up inside Todd right now. The only thing stopping him is Dirk, who’s staring at Dorian’s dead body with an expression that says he, too, is fighting the urge to do something tonally inappropriate, although maybe he’s just going to curl up in a ball with his hands over his ears again. The more he thinks about it, the more that sounds pretty good to Todd.

“Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot?” he asks, for lack of anything better. Dirk keeps staring.

“It’s usually somewhat more whimsical in nature,” Dirk answers slowly. “There has been a remarkable increase in blood splatters on this case, and although I appreciate the noir aspects of it, I can’t say I’m overly enjoying it.”

“No kidding,” Todd says. Tearing his eyes off the dead body on his carpet, he turns to Dirk and touches his arm, getting his attention. He probably doesn’t need to touch Dirk to do that, but apparently seeing someone die in front of you makes you yearn for a little bit of human contact. Go figure. “Come on, we’ll call the police from downstairs. God, they’re gonna think I’m a serial killer or something—”

The door bursts open for the third time today, uniformed figures swarming in. “Seriously?” Todd yells, hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat again. He recognises two of them as the cops who had interrogated him at the Perriman Grand. Shit, now they’re really going to think he’s a serial killer.

“Hands up!” one of them shouts, and Todd automatically raises his hands away from his body. Dirk stands completely still for another moment, and it’s only when he raises his hands as well that Todd realises they were clutched in Todd’s shirt.

 

* * *

 

Todd stumbles out of the police station, somewhat at a loss. He feels vaguely untethered and unreal, like when he’d caught the bus home after getting fired, mind still reeling over what he’d seen and what he was supposed to do after all that. Now, he’s just kind of bewildered at the series of events that have taken place over the last two days.

But at least he has an idea of what to do. He’s not leaving Dirk alone in that police station.

For a second, he paces in front of the steps, only to stop short in front of a poster for Lydia Spring. When he’d seen it on the bus the other day he hadn’t really thought about it, but now, knowing that Patrick Spring had died horribly and recently, seemingly with enough foreknowledge to hire Dirk to investigate it weeks in advance…

Everything is connected, he thinks, and turns to go back in and harass someone until they let Dirk out, only to find the man standing in front of him as if he’d been there the whole time. Dirk beams as Todd jumps.

“They let me out too,” he says, quiet but cheerful. “Probably the CIA, I know they’re keeping track.”

“Wh—no, never mind,” Todd says. “Did they give you the whole ‘person of interest’ speech, too?”

Dirk makes a high pitched _ehhh_ noise. “I’ve always been a person of interest, mostly by way of being an extraordinarily interesting person, but also slightly the whole CIA thing. You know they didn’t even mention the bloody Rowdy 3? They’re the same kind of interesting as me, so I assume the CIA had a hand in that as well—”

“Dirk, shut up,” Todd says. Dirk shuts his mouth for about half a second before he opens it again and says,

“Mm, thank you. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how unsettling this forced honesty thing is,” Dirk says, and on anyone else Todd would take it as a pointed insult, but on Dirk, it’s just a statement of solidarity. “Especially given that I never expected to experience, well. Any of this.”

“Me neither,” Todd says. He looks around and then sits down on the curb. They’d been driven here in a squad car, and it’s late enough that only the hourly buses are running, so it’s not like he has anywhere to be. After a few seconds Dirk sits down with him, knees almost tucked under his chin. It’s a weirdly endearing image, and a surge of fondness has Todd blurting out, “I’m glad it’s you. That you’re my soulmate.”

Dirk freezes, eyes suddenly wide. His mouth opens and closes twice before he finally asks, “Why?”

Todd sighs, stares at his hands, and then scrapes up some bravery. “I don’t… have friends,” he says. “It’s easier to keep up a lie if you don’t have more than a few people to keep it up with. And I’m – I was working all the time. And people don’t like me, because, you know.” He waves a hand at himself. Dirk frowns.

“I like you,” he says, simple as that. Todd smiles.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s why, Dirk.”

Dirk tilts his head and frowns in a curious way, like he’s solving a visual puzzle in his head. “So you… like me because… I like you?”

“Because you _want_ to like me,” Todd says, which is maybe a confusing way of putting it, but it’s what comes out of his mouth. “Because I’ve made you cry like, three times since we met, even though that was literally yesterday, and you still call me your friend. I’ve never had that before.”

“I’ve never had that either,” Dirk says. “You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend.”

Which might be the most depressing thing Todd’s ever heard, that out of everyone Dirk’s ever known, _he’s_ the one who’s treated Dirk the best. “Dirk, I’ve been a complete asshole to you.”

“But you’ve stuck around,” Dirk replies, almost stubbornly. “You calmed me down when I was panicking, and helped me figure out a vital part of the case, _and_ you didn’t run away while I was in the police station, even though you could have.”

“I was about to go back in to get you,” Todd admits, and Dirk beams in the way he does.

“You see? You’re a much better friend than you think,” he says.

The combination of the smile and the compliment is making him uncomfortably aware of his heartbeat, a little too rapid to dismiss, so he clears his throat and changes the subject. “How are you feeling, by the way?”

“Still… processing,” Dirk says. “Are you alright?”

Todd doesn’t bother trying to get the words ‘I’m fine’ out. “I don’t know,” he says instead. He leans back on the curb, looking straight up at where the stars should be. “My apartment is a crime scene. I have zero money, no prospects. I’m homeless and my sister hates me, and I’m a suspect in multiple homicides, and somehow I’m… okay.” The word passes his lips unchanged, and as he says it, he can feel a sense of ease in his stomach, soothing down the ever present anxiety and guilt. “Yeah. I’m okay. How’s that for weird?”

“Personally, I’m a huge fan of weird,” Dirk says. Todd snorts. When he looks over, Dirk’s smile has turned soft, making him look younger and somehow happier than when he was wearing his widest grin. Todd’s heartrate continues at its uncomfortably fast pace.

He clears his throat again and stands, holding out a hand to help Dirk up as well. “The bus stop isn’t too far from here,” he says, only sounding mildly uncomfortable. Dirk takes his hand after a moment and stands – he’s heavier than he looks, and Todd stumbles a little, ends up standing an inch too close to Dirk. Especially when he’s still looking all soft and cute. He drops his hand and looks away. “Come on.”

There’s still a thousand questions he needs answered, and his life has well and truly fallen apart around him. But for now, in this moment?

“I’m pretty sure the buses still run this late,” he says. “You don’t have money for a cab, do you?”

“The universe will provide if need be,” Dirk says seriously. Their hands brush as Todd rolls his eyes. Dirk looks over with that same smile and continues, “Don’t worry. I’m sure it will all turn out fine.”

And that’s the truth.   


End file.
